Teasdale's early popularity is reflected in her winning the first Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918, an award that would later be called the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her work was especially liked for its lyrical style and musical rhythm, and it was received equally well by male critics as well as by female critics, even though the subjects were often sensitive and sentimental. At least two critics who reviewed Flame and Shadow shortly after it was published found the collection stronger than her previous work, although similar in theme and tone. Writing for The Bookman, reviewer Louis Untermeyer claims the book

is by no means a series of facile melodies that live
only to be set to music or to fill a page. . . . Here are
new rhythms, far more subtle than those she has ever
employed; here are words chosen with a keener sense
of their actual as well...